Moon Over Buffalo

a comedy by Ken Ludwig

Jan. 16 to Feb. 10, 2008

Directed by Nancy Cates

Cast Biographies

Terry Burgler (George Hay) is a professional director, actor, writer and educator. He has performed on the Globe Theatre stage in London, and has acted and directed at numerous regional theatres across the country, including McCarter Theatre, the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, Stage/West and TheatreVirgina, where he served for 13 seasons and still ranks as the most successful Artistic Director in that theatre's 50-year history. For four years he was Artistic Director at Porthouse Theatre here in Northeast Ohio, presiding over record-breaking seasons that garnered significant critical praise as well. He resigned his position there to be able to pursue his passion for Shakespeare as one of the two founding artistic directors of the Ohio Shakespeare Festival, which performs each summer on the grounds of Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens in Akron. He holds a B.A. with honors from Princeton University and an M.F.A. from the University of Virginia. He is a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers (SSDC) and Actors' Equity Association (AEA).

Dede Klein (Charlotte Hay) was last seen here in one of her favorite shows, The Lion in Winter. For Moon Over Buffalo, she is delighted to work with one of her favorite directors, Nancy Cates, who also directed Dede in Hay Fever at Coach House Theatre and Blithe Spirit at Weathervane, shows for which Dede won each theater’s “best actress” award. Dede has also worked at Chagrin Valley Little Theatre, Aurora Community Theatre and The Bang & Clatter Theatre. This is Dede's fourth time playing mother to Scott Shriner, her second time playing mother to Kim Mahoney and daughter to Maureen Johnson, and the second time she's been passionate with Tim Champion (go figure!). Next up for Dede is The History Boys in March at The Beck Center for the Arts in Lakewood.

Alex J Nine (Howard) After spending much of the ‘90s onstage at Weathervane in shows such as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Translations, Six Degrees of Separation and A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Alex is thrilled to be back on the ‘Vane’s mainstage for the first time this century with Moon Over Buffalo. A lifelong native of Akron, and graduate of The University of Akron, Alex works regularly with Mysteries by Moushey, The Largely Literary Theatre Company and the Ohio Shakespeare Festival, where, over the past two summers, he has appeared in five shows, including Othello, Macbeth and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Alex is also a regular at Coach House Theatre, where he has appeared in Witness for the Prosecution, Ten Little Indians, Chapter Two, 6 RMS RVR VU and Hamlet. Other favorite roles include Freddy in Noises Off at the Hudson Players and, at The Players Guild of Canton, Willum in The Nerd, which Alex will direct this spring at Coach House Theatre.

Timothy H. Champion (Richard Maynard) is delighted to return to Weathervane for his 33rd production here. He has appeared in more than 200 plays, creating many memorable characters as well as a host of entirely forgettable ones too numerous to list. He may be familiar to some for his many appearances at Coach House Theatre, Dobama Theatre, the Players Guild Theatre, Porthouse Theatre Company, and Tri-C theatres. He has spent several happy summers playing with Terry Burgler and Nancy Cates at the Ohio Shakespeare Festival, which he helped to establish. Tim is grateful to Weathervane’s audiences, who have recognized seven of his acting efforts with Chanticleer Awards. He is particularly thankful for the many gifts this avocation has brought him: his companion, his closest friendships, the many opportunities to work with talented actors, directors, designers, musicians, and technicians – and he is especially grateful for the perspective he has gained inhabiting the shoes of so many different characters. By day Tim is engaged solving problems and adjusting human relationships in the practice of Trust, Estate, Probate, and Real Estate law at Champion & Company, LPA.

Scott Shriner (Paul) first appeared at Weathervane in 1996’s Loot, most recently in The Lion in Winter, and he won Chanticleers for Lend Me a Tenor, All My Sons and Three Days of Rain. His favorite role here is Nick in Over the River and Through the Woods in 2005. He’s performed at Actors’ Summit, The Bang and the Clatter Theatre Company, and with the Ohio Shakespeare Festival at Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens. He was last seen in the musical revue Oh, Coward! at Coach House Theatre. He thanks his lovely wife Kelly for her support, and is pleased to share this show with his "Mum," mother-in-law Maureen.

Maureen Johnson (Ethel) last appeared at Weathervane many years ago in Social Security. She returned to the theater last spring with a Royal Coach Award-winning performance in Coach House Theatre's production of A Murder is Announced. She turned up as Miss Wulla Jean in the Ohio Shakespeare Festival's The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas over the summer, and this past fall she filmed a small role in Make Me Popular, an independent movie shot in Cleveland. She credits her return to the support and encouragement of her family. She enjoys writing poetry and is a member of The Poets Nook.

Kimberly Mahoney (Roz) makes her debut on the Weathervane stage with this production and she is delighted to be here. Kimberly has acted in an around the Cleveland area for the past 10 years or so, having been seen on such stages as Coach House Theatre, the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival, the Halle Theatre, Hudson Players and East 2 Theatre Company. Her past credits include Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Agnes in Agnes of God, Amanda in Private Lives, Cherie in Bus Stop, Sorel in Hay Fever, Ophelia in Hamlet ESP and Germaine in Never the Sinner. She would like to give a shout out to the cast and crew for all of their hard work, dedication and tremendous humor. The rest is the madness of art!

Rachel Fichter (Eileen) just completed the role of one of the Plates in the Beck Center for the Arts production of Beauty and the Beast. She is a graduate of the College of Wooster, where she played Cordelia in King Lear and Constance Ledbelly in Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet). She has also appeared with the Ohio Shakespeare Festival in Comedy of Errors and Othello.

Nancy Cates (director) is delighted to join Weathervane to direct another of Ken Ludwig’s farces. This is Nancy’s tenth show here, with others including Ludwig’s Lend Me a Tenor from two seasons ago and last season’s All My Sons, along with earlier productions of A Man for All Seasons, Gypsy and Blithe Spirit, among others. Nancy is one of the two Artistic Directors of the Ohio Shakespeare Festival, which is gearing up for its seventh season of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Hamlet and I Hate Hamlet next summer at Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens. Nancy has directed over 150 productions in the last 27 years for regional, LORT, university, community and dinner theatres, and is equally devoted to theatrical genres from comedy to drama, from classic to musical. Nancy (like the Hay family in tonight’s show) has a particular fondness for Noel Coward, and she recently directed both “the Master’s” Hay Fever and musical revue Oh, Coward! (the latest of seven productions) for Coach House Theatre in Akron. Other particular favorites include the regional premiere of Cowgirls at the Empire Theatre (Virginia), three productions of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, three of A Christmas Carol with music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Bob Merrill (for which she was honored to adapt the book) and The King and I, accompanied by the Richmond Symphony. The recipient of eight sets of regional directing and best play awards, Nancy is an honors graduate of the University of Virginia, and a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers.

Jerry Mirman (stage manager) has served Weathervane for the past 20 years in a variety of roles, including but not limited to acting, stage-managing and designer of lighting and stage properties. His recent contributions include stage managing I Do! I Do!, The Sound of Music and Over the Tavern as well as lighting design for Fences. He has appeared on stage, too, in The Adding Machine, Major Barbara, A Cry of Players, Man of La Mancha and 1776. In the 2005-06 season he stage managed The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife and Over the River and Through the Woods, served as assistant stage manager for Noises Off, designed lights for Lend Me a Tenor and designed sound for Crowns. Jerry has also worked for several summers as a stage manager for the Ohio Shakespeare Festival, which performs on the grounds of Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens in Akron. For the current season, he serves as properties chair for Weathervane’s Production Board. During those rare times that he is not living at Weathervane, Jerry is a police, fire and 911 dispatcher for Copley Township.

Terry Burgler (fight choreographer) is a professional director, actor, writer and educator. He has performed on the Globe Theatre stage in London, and has acted and directed at numerous regional theatres across the country, including McCarter Theatre, the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, Stage/West and TheatreVirgina, where he served for 13 seasons and still ranks as the most successful Artistic Director in that theatre's 50-year history. For four years he was Artistic Director at Porthouse Theatre here in Northeast Ohio, presiding over record-breaking seasons that garnered significant critical praise as well. He resigned his position there to be able to pursue his passion for Shakespeare as one of the two founding artistic directors of the Ohio Shakespeare Festival, which performs each summer on the grounds of Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens in Akron. He holds a B.A. with honors from Princeton University and an M.F.A. from the University of Virginia. He is a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers (SSDC) and Actors' Equity Association (AEA).

M.J. Coulson (properties designer) has been an active Weathervane volunteer for the past 15 years. Her most recent properties-design work was for The Full Monty, and in September she shared her expertise by teaching a properties-design workshop for prospective volunteers. Retired as a registered nurse with Summa Health System, M.J. enjoys working with the many young people who come to volunteer at the Playhouse – and she cherishes the opportunity to chair the Youth Award presentation at the Playhouse’s annual Chanticleer Awards ceremony. In October, she traveled abroad to southern India, Sri Lanka and the Maldine Islands. Her recent travels have also taken her to Florida, where she spent time with her two sons and two grandsons.

Karen Burridge (costume designer) is a former Weathervane Women’s Board president who has continued to pursue new Weathervane volunteer opportunities. She has sewn dozens of costumes, assembled a multitude of stage properties and worked in a front-of-house capacity as well as one of the many friendly ushers and hostesses who welcome theater patrons to their seats. Most recently, she designed the stage properties for Weathervane’s Amahl and the Night Visitors. Retired from the United States Postal Service, she and husband Pat live in Kent with their two children.

Dave Heltebran (sound designer) has spent 26 years with Weathervane as an actor, stage manager, house manager and sound designer. His performance credits roles in Man of La Mancha and The Pirates of Penzance, and his stage-management credits include our productions of Biloxi Blues, As Bees in Honey Drown and, most recently, Amahl and the Night Visitors. A native of Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania, Dave studied electrical engineering at the University of Akron. By day, he works as a systems-network analyst for American Greetings but also makes time in his off-work hours to sing with the Akron Symphony Chorus.

Alan Scott Ferrall (Scenic Designer) -- see staff bios.

Kathy Kohl (Assistant Technical Director) -- see staff bios.

Moon Over Buffalo takes place on stage – and backstage – at the Erlanger Theater in Buffalo, New York, in 1953. George and Charlotte Hay, far from the bright lights of Broadway, are a hapless husband-and-wife acting duo stuck in Buffalo performing in a repertory company with a double bill of Cyrano de Bergerac and Private Lives. Charlotte pines for a more glamorous life as a film actor in Hollywood while husband George remains satisfied with the theatrical life. A fortuitous phone call from famous Hollywood director Frank Capra promises the career opportunity of a lifetime for both George and Charlotte – but will George pull himself together and can Charlotte believe her husband’s news of this call? Doors will slam and identities will be mistaken – promising laughter and hilarious hijinks in this fast-paced farce.

Moon Over Buffalo opened at New York’s Martin Beck Theatre in October 1995 and starred Carol Burnett and Philip Bosco. Later in its New York run, Lynn Redgrave and Robert Goulet replaced Burnett and Bosco. It ran on Broadway for 309 performances and earned Tony nominations for Burnett and Bosco. A subsequent production in London’s West End starred Joan Collins and Frank Langella. About Moon Over Buffalo, The New York Times declared, “Ken Ludwig is one of those rare contemporary playwrights who thinks in terms of old-fashioned knockabout farce, and that's something to be cherished.”

A 1998 documentary film, Moon Over Broadway, revealed a warts-and-all, behind-the-scenes look at the play as Oscar-winning filmmakers Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker chronicled the playwright and the creative team’s often-bumpy journey to Broadway, following the show all the way from its first read-through up to its final performance.

About the Playwright

Ken Ludwig will be familiar to Weathervane audiences who saw his 1989 comedy, Lend Me a Tenor, on our Main Stage in a 2006 Nancy Cates-directed production. Ludwig was born in York, Pennsylvania and was educated at Haverford College (bachelor’s), Harvard Law School (juris doctorate) and Cambridge University’s Trinity College (legum baccalaureus). His Lend Me a Tenor was his first show on Broadway and earned seven Tony nominations (and won two of them) and has been translated into 16 languages and produced in 25 countries around the world. He wrote the book for the musical comedy Crazy for You, which ran for four years at the Shubert Theater in New York. It won the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Los Angeles Critics Circle and Helen Hayes Awards as Best Musical of the Year, as well as the Olivier Award for Best Musical in London, and was broadcast nationwide on the PBS television series Great Performances. In 2004, his comedy Leading Ladies premiered at the Cleveland Play House. He is an associate artist of the Alley Theatre in Houston, where his play Be My Baby opened in its 2005-06 season in a production starring husband-and-wife duo Hal Holbrook and Dixie Carter. He has served on the New Play Committee of the National Endowment of the Arts. He is a founding member of the Shakespeare Theatre of Washington. His awards include the Edwin Forrest Award (named after a 19th Century American actor from Philadelphia and presented in recognition of services to the American arts) and the Pennsylvania Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. He is married to Adrienne George and has two children, Olivia and Jack; the family resides in the Washington, D.C. area.